......UW officials say that Walker's proposal to end funding for the bioenergy program would cripple broader energy-development research that is receiving $25million annually from the federal Department of Energy."I can't honestly say how we would replace it at this point,"said Michael Corradini,director of the Wisconsin Energy Institute at UW-Madison,which derives 90% of its funding from the bioenergy program...In 2007,Wisconsin landed the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center—the first federal research center the state had attracted in decades. The center received an initial five-year,$125 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.It was part of a $375 million package by the administration...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to incorporate macroeconomic projections into cost estimates for major legislation, a move that critics say could hide the true budgetary effects of tax cuts. The move toward "dynamic scoring" is part of a package of new rules that passed on a 234-172 party-line vote as the new Republican-controlled Congress started its work.

The self-proclaimed Â“Robin Hood of RockÂ” is beginning to sound a little more like Grover Norquist than a traditional pop-culture leftist. The U2 frontman, Bono, recently praised IrelandÂ’s extraordinarily low tax rate, whileÂ claiming that the move has brought unparalleled prosperity to the Emerald Isle. According to theÂ UK Independent, Bono boasted about the tax-policyÂ’s ability to bring wealth to Ireland for the first time in centuries:Â“We are a tiny little country, we donÂ’t have scale, and our version of scale is to be innovative and to be clever, and tax competitiveness has brought our country the only prosperity weÂ’ve known.Â”He even...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Struggling to reach a long-term agreement, House Republicans plan to vote on a one-year extension of temporary tax breaks affecting millions of businesses and individuals. Most of the more than 50 tax breaks expired at the end of 2013, so the extension would only run through the end of this month. However, it would allow taxpayers to claim the tax breaks when they file their 2014 tax returns.

The midterms are over, meaning the 2016 White House race has begun. Here's my bold prediction: Almost all the GOP presidential contenders will offer a big tax-cut plan. Of course they will. Income tax cuts have been the defining issue of the modern Republican Party since the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. As conservative political reporter Robert Novak once declared, "God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don't do that, they have no useful function." And if history is a reliable guide, most of those tax-cut plans will focus on cutting personal taxes so the...

Finding a way to prevent the next Burger King from fleeing the U.S. (to avoid paying the highest corporate tax rates in the world) appears to rank fairly high on the priority list for both Republicans and Democrats. But the two parties couldn’t be farther apart on the appropriate policy to end these so-called “unpatriotic” tax inversions. No strangers to coercion, the Obama administration via Treasury Secretary Jack Lew recently announced that through the use of executive action, “the agency would change several tax rules to stop companies from buying smaller, foreign firms and then moving out of the U.S.”...

350 more U.S. troops are headed to Iraq to fight a war that Obama declared over almost exactly four years ago today. Â“President Obama declared an end on Tuesday to the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq,Â” wrote the New York Times on the last day of August in 2010, Â“saying that the United States has met its responsibility to that country and that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home.Â”Like a lot of journalism, what the New York Times wrote that day was more ofÂ an elegy for the Obama administration and its brand of progressivism...

You can’t help but hand it to them – rooftop solar companies have quite cleverly found their way onto the government’s gravy train. For years Washington has subsidized rooftop solar installations for customers in the form of the Solar Investment Tax Credit, which allows homeowners who install rooftop solar panels to receive a tax credit of up to 30 percent of the cost. The subsidy has been one of the many ongoing ways in which the feds insert themselves into the energy marketplace. And while it has hampered efforts to achieve real energy independence in the U.S., and has...

When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker delivered his State of the State address in January 2013, he promised that an agenda of budget cutting, reduced taxes and less business regulation would result in a better economic climate and more jobs for his state. “Unlike the message coming out of Washington, I believe that putting more money in the hands of the people — instead of the government — is good for the economy,” said the Republican governor, who is known as a reformer. Walker is just one of several Republican governors who, with the help of friendly Republican-dominated state legislatures, have...

In 2012, Kansas governor Sam Brownback signed a massive tax cut into law, arguing that it would boost the state's economy. Eventually, he hoped to eliminate individual income taxes entirely. "Our place, Kansas, will show the path, the difficult path, for America to go in these troubled times," he said. National conservative activists raved. Patrick Gleason of Americans for Tax Reform said Kansas was "the story of the next decade." The Cato Institute praised Brownback's "impressive" tax cuts and gave him an "A" on fiscal policy. And the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol said that, if reelected, Brownback would be "a...

It is a sign that the European economy is no longer in crisis territory that tax cuts rather than bailouts dominated Monday’s (7 July) meeting of eurozone finance ministers. Ministers at the monthly Eurogroup meeting agreed to sign off the next €1 billion tranche of Greece’s bailout program almost as an afterthought. Instead, the main item of discussion focused on how they can cut business costs and increase the pay packet of the average European. In its annual set of economic recommendations to the EU’s 28 countries last month, the European Commission urged 11 euro-area countries to reduce their so-called...

President Obama and his aides are up to their usual deeply unpresidential vitriol, suggesting evil motives on the part of Republicans for opposing Obama’s agenda. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney today compared Republican opponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act to “conservatives” who fought civil rights legislation. Carney spoke today at the White House briefing: "Republicans object to this strenuously using the same arguments that conservatives used when they objected to very bit of progress made on civil rights for women and minorities over the past many decades. And they were wrong then, and they are wrong now." Actually, Republicans...

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday took a shot at the mainstream media and even some conservative outlets for underreporting on the success of Gov. Scott Walker (R) in Wisconsin. Limbaugh cited an Associated Press report run Wednesday on page A14 of the New York Times about the Wisconsin Assembly passing Walker’s $504 million tax-cut plan. As previously reported by TheBlaze, Walker intends to use part of Wisconsin’s projected $977 million surplus to pay for property and income tax cuts.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Law enforcement officials raided the office and home of House Speaker Gordon Fox on Friday as part of a criminal investigation by the U.S. attorney's office, FBI, IRS and state police. Officials would not say who or what was being investigated, but authorities worked for hours inside the Democratic House speaker's Statehouse office while state police troopers stood outside. Authorities entered the office carrying an evidence bag and empty cardboard boxes Friday morning. Fox's spokesman, Larry Berman, said state police had asked everyone working in the office to leave, but he didn't know why. At around...

To glimpse Swedish angst under its picture postcard prosperity, look no further than film director Lisa Ohlin, who has enjoyed years of tax cuts in an economy the envy of Europe. Homes in her Stockholm neighborhood cost around $1 million. But this leafy, well-heeled area is a microcosm of Sweden, where eyes are on a struggling school with strained finances, not enough teachers and poor results. Like many Swedes, Ohlin wants her cherished welfare state back. […] Voters like Ohlin are returning to faith in cradle to grave welfare after eight years of center-right Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who cut...

Fifty years ago last week, on Feb. 26, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the sweeping tax cuts that had been championed by his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. The law brought the top marginal income-tax rate down to 70% from 91% and the bottom marginal rate down to 14% from 20%. The 22 rates in between also were cut. The tax legislation of 1964 was one of three major across-the-board income-tax cuts in the 20th century. The others took place in the 1920s, during the Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge administrations, and in 1981 and 1986 during...

Fiscal Policy: President Obama is putting all his political chips on raising the minimum wage to 10.10 an hour, but so far that issue isn't gaining much political traction. The 500,000 job losses confirmed last week by the Congressional Budget Office certainly were a mortal wound to the legislative push — as well they should be when we have nearly 20 million Americans already unemployed or underemployed. But most Americans have a much bigger concern than raising the minimum wage. Only about 5% of workers make that little (the average is well above $20 an hour), and most receiving the...

Last year, Oklahoma legislators voted on a tax reduction package to the state’s personal income tax. The measure passed the legislature and was signed by Governor Fallin. Ultimately, however, Oklahoma’s State Supreme Court struck down the tax cut measure. This is a topic that we have discussed in more detail previously. Pro-growth tax reform is again being considered in Oklahoma and the new measure, being considered in both houses, is even bolder than the tax cut package from last session. The 2013 tax cut package would have reduced the state’s personal income tax from 5.25 percent to 5 percent starting...

Just a few months after Missouri’s Governor Jay Nixon vetoed a small but beneficial income tax cut, totaling $700 million over 10 years (barely larger than the one-year value of recent cuts in North Carolina), the Governor convened a special session to provide tax carve-outs for aircraft manufacturer, Boeing. That special session resulted in $1.7 billion in tax incentives to be paid out over 23 years, albeit with some job creation performance targets Boeing is required to hit in order to receive said tax benefits. The juxtaposition of these events provides an awkward contradiction. First, the suggestion that Boeing needs...

Gov. Scott Walker plans to propose "significant" tax cuts in his State of the State address next week, reductions made possible by tax collections that far exceed earlier estimates, his spokeswoman said Wednesday. Walker won't reveal details until his speech Wednesday, but he is looking at property tax cuts and changing income tax withholding tables to put more money into workers' paychecks immediately, his spokeswoman Jocelyn Webster said. "This is great news for the hardworking taxpayers of the state," she said. Walker and Republicans who control the Legislature have been discussing details of the proposal, Webster said. "I want all...

LINCOLN — Gov. Dave Heineman is wasting no time promoting his push for tax-relief legislation in 2014. Heineman scooped his own State of the State address — scheduled for delivery this morning — by revealing his plan Tuesday night to seek up to $500 million in tax cuts over the next three years.

Norquist's Muslim Protégés By Paul Sperry FrontPageMagazine.com | 6/3/2008 If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That appears to be the strategy of GOP powerbroker Grover Norquist in his wicked project to dress Islamists up as patriotic Republicans so they can infiltrate the government. While he's managed to get some of his Muslim proteges jobs in the Bush administration, getting them elected to public office has been another story. Voters aren't buying their makeover. Last November, his crony Faisal M. Gill lost a bid for a seat in the Virginia state legislature. Now another protege, Kamal M. Nawash,...

In all of the many film documentaries, news stories and other media programs about the life and death of President John F. Kennedy, few if any mention one of his major legacies: cutting taxes to, in his words, "get America moving again." Democrats and President Obama, for whom "tax cuts" is an "expletive deleted", despise the idea and never talk about JFK's across-the-board, income tax rate reductions which led to a decade- long burst of economic growth. What Kennedy proposed and got through a Democratic Congress deserves our attention now more than ever. With the Obama economy still "stuck in...

After delivering a number of “economic growth” speeches this summer, President Obama has failed to inspire any confidence, falling all the way back to square one in a recent Gallup poll. Actually, make that less than square one. Gallup reported that Obama’s approval rating on the economy has sunk to 35 percent in August from 42 percent in early June. Why should we be surprised? The actual economy shows real GDP falling well below 2 percent. This so-called recovery remains the worst in modern history dating back to 1947. And as far as solutions go, Obama keeps giving us the...

I don't agree with much at all of what the Oklahoma Policy Institute puts out, but their information about the recent tax cut legislation passed by the Oklahoma legislature and signed into law by Governor Fallin is right on the money. Opinions about policy can vary, but numbers don't lie. I've looked at the new tax rates in House Bill 2032 and I've run the numbers against the tax rates in this year's form 511 - the Oklahoma individual income tax form. What the numbers tell me is that the things being said by Governor Fallin, Speak of the House...

As Indiana governor, Mike Pence has been flying under the radar. While other Republican governors, such as Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, have taken advantage of their platform to speak out nationally, Pence has stuck close to his state and focused on the concerns of Hoosiers. Pence — who attracted buzz as a potential 2012 contender when he was still a congressman in 2011 — has instead been working diligently to rack up accomplishments during his first term as governor. Pence’s top accomplishment this session was cutting Indiana taxes. Initially, he had proposed slashing the income-tax rate, currently at 3.4...

Pelosi: ‘Tax Cuts Are Spending’ March 7, 2013 By Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) said today that the government must cut spending, and then explained that: “Tax cuts are spending.” “Our whole budget is what $3.5 trillion,” Pelosi said at a Capitol Hill press conference. “So, when we talk about reducing spending, we certainly must, and we certainly have--$1.6 trillion in the previous Congress, $1.2 of it in the Budget Control Act. “But spending is also related to tax cuts,” said Pelosi. Tax cuts are spending. Tax expenditures, they are called. Subsidies for big...

The 'Base Case' Of Full Sequestration Is A Loss Of One Million Jobs Walter HickeyFebruary 5,2013 The Bipartisan Policy Center — an independent group with a long track record of accurate prognostication — has confirmed that they expect massive job losses across the board if Congress is unable to avert the sequester. The prediction isn't without immediate evidence, either. The contraction in GDP last week was largely attributed to decrease in government funding allocated to manufacturing in the defense sector, which has seen a substantial cut as a result of the Budget Control Act of 2011 mandatory spending caps and...

<p>Although federal taxes are rising for three-quarters of Americans this year, many states have spent the last two fiscal years cutting levies and simplifying their tax codes. Even as high profile battles to raise taxes in places like California have garnered the press's attention, from Kansas to Michigan to Oregon and New Jersey, states have actually been net tax cutters recently after trying for several years to tax their way out of budget woes.</p>

A number of commentators, including myself, have argued that if no deal is reached to avert the “fiscal cliff” and taxes go up on most Americans, then President Obama will be able to structure a massive middle class tax cut in the new year that Republicans would find impossible to oppose. Among the many political implications of such a scenario, one would be that the basket of policies now commonly referred to as the “Bush tax cuts” will suddenly morph into the “Obama middle class tax cut.” In my mind, this would be a major error by Republicans. Democrats were...

"God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don't do that, they have no useful function." Columnist Robert Novak was speaking of the party that embraced the revolution of Ronald Reagan, who had hung a portrait of Calvin Coolidge in his Cabinet Room and set about cutting income tax rates to 28 percent. But, to be historically precise, the GOP was not put here to cut taxes. From infancy in the 1850s, its mission was to halt the spread of slavery. From 1865 to 1929, it was the party of high tariffs. Mission: Build the nation...

It seems to me that plan B is a pretty thought out response to Democrats traps and games and contrary to claims it raises NO taxes, all it does is fully protect the 99.8% by extending the tax rates on the first $1M of everyoneÂ’s income. Pretty much every R criticism on it has been telling the untruth that it Â‘raises taxesÂ’ which ttells me they have no case. Also Pelosi, Reid and O are all against it. But unfortunately the Â‘we want to be defeated by O againÂ’ crowd is once again at it. Let me compare the two...

Taxes are set to go up by $4.6 trillion on January 1st. That is the law of the land. Yesterday, the official tax scorekeeper of Congress, the Joint Committee on Taxation, released their analysis of Speaker John Boehner’s, R-Ohio, Plan B. According to the JTC, Plan B would cut taxes by $4.1 trillion over ten years. It should come as no surprise that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whose entire political career has been devoted to enlarging the size and scope of the federal government, is whipping hard against Plan B. “I haven’t seen her work a vote this hard...

President Obama seems to have a strategy to terminate all of the Bush tax cuts, not just those for “the rich,” as he has been saying since 2008. He is offering the Republicans exactly zero concessions in the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. No spending cuts, no entitlement reform, no compromise on the rates. It is entirely my way or the highway, and if the Republicans refuse to do everything exactly as he demands, he will let the Bush tax cuts expire entirely, for the middle class and working people as well as the upper incomes, and blame the Republicans for refusing...

<p>Fiscal Policy: The president tells business leaders he wants to do away with Congress when it comes to raising the country's legal debt limit and be able to do it all by himself.</p>
<p>It was on display again Wednesday, when President Obama told CEOs at the Business Roundtable he is no longer playing the debt ceiling "game" of agreeing to raise the limit in exchange for administration concessions on spending and taxes.</p>

Fiscal Policy: Talk of Clinton-era tax rates ignores the fact that the former president, working with a GOP Congress, cut spending as a share of GDP and produced four balanced budgets by focusing on growth, not spending. Even as he pushes $150 billion in new "stimulus" spending, President Obama argues that to avoid the fiscal cliff we must return to Clinton-era tax rates for wealthy households, with a top marginal rate of 39.6% vs. the Bush-era 35%. Clinton's was an age of balanced budgets and economic growth. But it was also an era of budgetary restraint in which both parties,...

Fiscal Policy: Talk of Clinton-era tax rates ignores the fact that the former president, working with a GOP Congress, cut spending as a share of GDP and produced four balanced budgets by focusing on growth, not spending. Even as he pushes $150 billion in new "stimulus" spending, President Obama argues that to avoid the fiscal cliff we must return to Clinton-era tax rates for wealthy households, with a top marginal rate of 39.6% vs. the Bush-era 35%. Clinton's was an age of balanced budgets and economic growth. But it was also an era of budgetary restraint in which both parties,...

How many times have we heard that the only thing standing in the way of a grand bargain to reduce our growing national debt is Republican intransigence on taxes? If Republicans would only agree to dump Grover Norquist, Democrats will agree to cut spending and reform entitlements. Then, we can all join hands and sing Kumbaya as we usher in a new era of compromise and fiscal responsibility. Except that now that Republicans have agreed to raise taxes, er, revenue, as part of an agreement to avoid the looming fiscal cliff, liberals appear to have decided that there really isn’t...

It´s been more than 10 years since President Bush signed his first round of tax cuts into law. And in the years since, those cuts have been the source of constant attacks. [snip] But a decade of debate and discussion has managed to shed little light on what the Bush tax cuts actually did. So as the debate heats up once again as part of the "fiscal cliff" negotiations, it´s worth taking the time to highlight some of the things most people never knew about the Bush-era tax cuts.

As you know, GOP Rep. Tom Cole made waves today by urging Republicans to give in to the Dem demand that they extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone under $250,000. Cole argued this would remove the leverage Dems have and give the GOP more leverage to fight to extend the high-end tax cuts later, since Dems want the fiscal cliff averted and also want a debt ceiling hike. Today John Boehner rejected Cole’s suggestion. But in the process, he said something pretty revealing: ***** “I told Tom earlier in our conference meeting that I disagreed with him,” Boehner told...

During last Wednesday’s news conference, President Obama offered his plan for dealing with the looming fiscal cliff and expiring tax cuts. While the President claims he desires to work with Congress to reduce the deficit in a balanced and responsible way, he was clear that he intends to hold the middle class hostage in order to achieve his goal of increasing taxes on more successful Americans. How is the President doing this? By announcing that Congress must either bow to his agenda or send all Americans a higher tax bill. While Obama was busily pushing his ultimatum, he seems...

Two days before the last night’s presidential debate, the Washington Post’s frenetic blogger Ezra Klein wrote that “Romney’s tax cuts cost $5 trillion over 10 years before his (unnamed) offsets. Extending the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000 adds another $1 trillion. Then there’s the $2 trillion in new defense spending. So before Romney can cut the deficit by a dime, he has to come up with $8 trillion in offsets and savings for these plans.” Obama echoed Klein’s remarks quite closely in the second debate, but the figures are pure fiction. One part of the ruse, the $5...

President Obama often talks about the need for a "balanced" approach to deficit reduction, by which he means tax hikes in addition to spending cuts. At the recent presidential debate, for example, he said, "We've got to reduce our deficit, but we've got to do it in a balanced way. Asking the wealthy to pay a little bit more along with cuts." The only problem with this approach is that the massive projected deficits over the next 10 years aren't the result of too few taxes. They are entirely the result of too much spending. Here's the proof.

Vice President Biden's sharp retort to Rep. Paul Ryan's invocation of President John F. Kennedy was by far the single biggest single moment of the debate according to Twitter metrics. "Oh, now you're Jack Kennedy?" Biden quipped when Ryan asserted that Kennedy had successfully lowered taxes to foster economic growth. After Biden's retort, Twitter erupted with 58,275 tweets per minute, more than at any other point in the debate. Biden's comments brought to mind the other famous Jack Kennedy debate moment in which Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen slammed his Republican opponent Dan Quayle for comparing himself to Jack...

WASHINGTON -- No other issue is paralyzing the U.S. economy more than the unsettled question of where taxes are headed in the years to come. That question, raised by a tidal wave of expiring tax cuts that will hit most of us on Jan. 1, is the chief cause of the uncertainty that has swept through our economy, stalling business expansion, capital investment and job creation. The issue is further complicated by Obamacare and a regulatory maze of mandates, tax increases, penalties and fees that will hit businesses and middle-class Americans alike. Why hire more workers when the feds could...

In last week's presidential debate, President Obama seemed stunned to learn that the "$5 trillion tax cut" in his talking points, financed by a mythical middle-class tax increase, does not exist in Mitt Romney's economic plan. But now, even after the Obama campaign staff has acknowledged the error, why won't the President? At last Wednesday's debate in Denver, Mr. Romney explained that he doesn't plan to cut taxes by $5 trillion. This is because, while his plan rolls back individual income tax rates by 20% and cuts the corporate rate to 25% from 35%, he also plans to reduce personal...

"Now Governor Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he'd double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place."--- President Obama in an ad released September 27. This is Obamaâ€™s core message. In one way or another, he says it all the time. It's his kicker on the stump. You cannot watch an interview with the president or one of his subalterns without hearing it.And yet, I don't think I've ever heard a TV...

After watching the first debate, I refuse to believe that American voters will choose an encore for Obama's version of "hope and change." Regardless of his new campaign promises, Romney reminded us of Obama's failed trickle-down-government and his string of broken promises. Here are ten reasons that it's time for a change in Washington. 1. He said, "I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office." Instead the deficit has increased by over $5.3 trillion and keeps on growing! 2. He said, "Transparency and the rule of law will...

The biggest item with which Team Obama was able to come out swinging following last week's presidential debate (except for something about Mitt Romney being too "aggressive" and possibly trying to cheat on live television) was playing up their hilariously-contrived claim that Mitt Romney's plan for "$5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy must necessarily raise taxes on the middle class or increase the deficit." a claim with which Robert Samuelson took umbrage: To justify its $5 trillion figure â€” the estimated tax loss over a decade --- the Obama campaign had to cherry-pick Romney's proposal and the TPC...